[MEGA MODCOMP] Conqueror's Delight

[raigainousa]

excellent, but please make one for 3.13.

 

[keldath]

great dp, thanks for the explanation.

now,
the gold cost thingy, do you know the mod ive uploaded a while a go? is it the same idea?
creating goldcost value to units?

 

[Dom Pedro II]

great dp, thanks for the explanation.

now,
the gold cost thingy, do you know the mod ive uploaded a while a go? is it the same idea?
creating goldcost value to units?

The gold cost refers to promotions in this case. If you don't have the gold available, the promotion won't appear among your choices for a promotion. Otherwise when you select it, the promotion is given and the gold deducted from your total gold.

 

[keldath]

i see ,

thanks dp2.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Two things, when I press the insert button to enter the nearest city's screen I get a CTD. I am running BTS 3.17 with Solver's unofficial patch.

Second, when I automate a fishing boat, instead of going to the fish resource just outside the city it disappeared. I think it may have joined the city but I am not sure.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I've been working on this some more. I haven't uploaded a new version yet, but here's a pic of the latest addition. When Barbarians capture another player's city, they'll demand a ransom. If the player pays the ransom, the Barbarians around the city will go away and the city will not change hands to the Barbarians. Refusing their demand will result in the city being captured as normal. I'm considering making it more likely for them to raze the city... not sure.

If the player doesn't have the cash, the Barbs will skip asking for the money and just take the city like normal. The amount of money demanded is based on the city's population, number of buildings, wonders, holy city and number of cities the player has on the continent. The value of each is moddable in the XML.

I'm thinking of adding similar code for ransoming Workers, Settlers, Great People, etc. This'll reduce the damage individual Barb units can do to your early game, but it also gives incentive for modders to make Barbs as a whole stronger on the map.

 

[keldath]

hey dp,
well thats a good idea,
though, i think the price for bribing a city should be high...so a player would have a dilema on bribing or not, if the price based on the city level, then you should add a constant amount to it - say - a city sized 6 is say 200 for a bride and the constant amount is 100 - total of 300, and perhaps make this consant amount changble through the ini file so players can change the "difficulty " through the ini.

anyway, im gonna merge this aewsome mod into mine around september, and the more it will containe - the better

 

[Dom Pedro II]

hey dp,
well thats a good idea,
though, i think the price for bribing a city should be high...so a player would have a dilema on bribing or not, if the price based on the city level, then you should add a constant amount to it - say - a city sized 6 is say 200 for a bride and the constant amount is 100 - total of 300, and perhaps make this consant amount changble through the ini file so players can change the "difficulty " through the ini.

anyway, im gonna merge this aewsome mod into mine around september, and the more it will containe - the better

I'm not adding it to the ini file. I"m adding it to the XML in the global defines. The ransom gold per population is already in there. Right now I have it set to 5 gold per population, but if a modder wants to change it to 33 gold per turn (to give roughly 200 gold with a size 6 city) they certainly can.

But your mentioning changing difficulty reminded me that I also wanted to add in a factor that would make it more costly on different difficulty levels.

 

[Jeckel]

O, that is awesome. I'm working on a mod devoted entierly to Players being Barbarians and it might be cool to use this so they can ransom cities back to the AI instead of just getting money for razing the city. Can't wait to check it out.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

O, that is awesome. I'm working on a mod devoted entierly to Players being Barbarians and it might be cool to use this so they can ransom cities back to the AI instead of just getting money for razing the city. Can't wait to check it out.

Well, I think this could certainly get you started on that track. However, if the player is acting as Barbarians, the player should probably have the option to ransom the cities to the AI. I have not built in any interface for the Barbarians to opt to ransom the city or not. Also, when the city owner selects to pay the ransom, the Barbarian units are deleted rather than simply moved. I doubt the Barbarian human player would want to see their armies blinked out of existence

 

[GeoModder]

Neath idea.

 

[Jeckel]

Well, I think this could certainly get you started on that track. However, if the player is acting as Barbarians, the player should probably have the option to ransom the cities to the AI. I have not built in any interface for the Barbarians to opt to ransom the city or not. Also, when the city owner selects to pay the ransom, the Barbarian units are deleted rather than simply moved. I doubt the Barbarian human player would want to see their armies blinked out of existence

In my mod, the Player Barbs don't have any cities themselves and are dependent wholly on units they buy from a Barbarian Camp unit. At the moment, when Player Barbs capture a city it is auto razed and they get a chunk of gold. But I always disliked this from a historical aspect and being able to ransom the city back to the AI instead of it just getting razed seems like an appropriate option. I will, of course, give players the option to ransom the city or just raze it. I know if I finnally manage to take Atlanta in the test game I'm playing right now, there is nothing that would stop me from burning it to the ground. They killed my Great General, General Bob, god rest his soul, he shal be avenged!!

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I've also developed a city surrender feature so that if you move against a city with overwhelming odds or if the city has a large population of your culture, there's a chance the city might surrender to you. If the city has a majority of your people in it, you'll annex the city directly, but if not, the city leaders will ask you to form a new puppet government or they will ask to join an existing one. If you demand complete annexation, there's a percentage chance of them accepting or rejecting this based on just how badly they're going to lose the fight for the city. I haven't had the opportunity to test this out yet. I anticipate a lot of tweaking before it's ready to be released

 

[Dom Pedro II]

In my mod, the Player Barbs don't have any cities themselves and are dependent wholly on units they buy from a Barbarian Camp unit. At the moment, when Player Barbs capture a city it is auto razed and they get a chunk of gold. But I always disliked this from a historical aspect and being able to ransom the city back to the AI instead of it just getting razed seems like an appropriate option. I will, of course, give players the option to ransom the city or just raze it. I know if I finnally manage to take Atlanta in the test game I'm playing right now, there is nothing that would stop me from burning it to the ground. They killed my Great General, General Bob, god rest his soul, he shal be avenged!!

For God's sakes, Jeckel! Hasn't Atlanta been razed enough times already? Of course, that last time around, I seem to remember them having their own General Bob.

Sounds like a good mod. If it plays in Peoria, it must be good.

 

[keldath]

i see dp2,

well if a modder can change the rate..its cool.

i cant wait for the next release - any ideas when?

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I'm aiming for this weekend... depends on how tough the surrender mechanic is to get functional. I don't want to add anything that'll make this even buggier

 

[keldath]

awesome mate.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

The city surrender mechanic actually turned out to be a bit trickier than I thought it would be initially because I had to take into account the possibility of a battle royale taking place around the city. So it wasn't just a matter of calculating defender player strength and attacker player strength around the city. You also had to consider the possibility that there might be two or more armies attacking the city and two or more friendly players in the area.

But a friendly player might not be at war with both of your enemies, or they may be at war with only one of them, so you have to weight the strength contribution to your city's defense accordingly.

There will be a moddable base chance of a city surrendering and then numerous factors that will make it more likely for a city to surrender. Some of these include:

• Distance from capital and presence on the continent - a lone city on a faraway continent will therefore be much more likely to roll out the red carpet for the invaders
• Religion - the presence of the invader's state religion in the city will increase the chance
• Culture - this is a big factor... the more enemy culture in the city, the more likely the chance of surrender. Neutral culture will also count towards the surrender chance but much less than enemy culture.
• Past razings - cities will be more likely to surrender if the attacker has a tendency to burn his enemy's cities to the ground
• Happiness - culture is factored into this already, but an unhappy city will be more likely to surrender
• Starvation - if you pillage a lot around the city and position your units around the city and sit on their fertile land, the city will begin to starve and will be much more likely to surrender
• Presence of non-city units in the city - The more non-native troops you keep in the city, the LESS chance there is that it will surrender.
• Overall power - A city will never surrender if the defender's forces around the city are stronger than the attackers forces, but the players over all strengths will affect this. If the citizens feel that it's likely that their civilization will win the war, they'll be less likely to throw in the towel. On the other hand, if the invader is the favorite and has an overwhelming force right at their gates, they'll be more likely to give up.
• Wonders and Holy City status - These things will help keep the city and require the attacker to take the city by force.
• Existing damage - Bombarding a city back to the stone age will make it more likely that the city will surrender.
• (FUTURE POSSIBILITY) Government preference - There's not existing tags in the game for this, and I don't really want to add them purely for this one mechanic, but people would rather live under some governments than other. Perhaps the people would throw open the doors if the invader is a liberal democracy and the defender is a brutal dictatorship. On the other hand, if it's the other way around, the citizens may be more inclined to fight tooth and nail to prevent the invaders from coming in.
  

Any factors seem unnecessary? Any you think I've left out and should include?

I'm also considering the possibility of pre-invasion antics... I was thinking it'd be cool if there could be instances of sabotage by sympathetic forces when your armies arrive at the city. One that I thought was good was the possibility of destroying bridges. In this case, when that happened, all of the river crossings (for both players) would work like they would without Bridge Building. So if the defender's troops were rushing in to relieve the city, they'd suffer the movement penalty when crossing a river.

Not sure if this would be done using the events interface... I'm not a huge fan of the events system for certain things, so I don't know.

 

[GeoModder]

What happens with the defending units when the city surrenders? Are those transfered, disbanded, or expelled or what?

 

[Dom Pedro II]

What happens with the defending units when the city surrenders? Are those transfered, disbanded, or expelled or what?

A very good question. I was thinking of making use of the home city code that I've included in the mod. So all non-city troops (i.e. troops that were trained in other cities) would retreat either to the nearest available plot still controlled by the defender or to the nearest friendly city. I haven't quite decided on which.

Units from the city (but only the ones actually in the city at the time) will have a percentage chance to defect along with the city and join the other team. I could make this more moddable though... I mean, I could see tribal/feudal societies where soldiers might actually switch sides if their home cities did, and I could also see more modern, nationalistic societies where those from the surrendering city would be either unable or unwilling to stay with their city and would thus retreat with the rest of the defending forces. So I could make these conditions dependent on techs and civics.

I'm also thinking that the defending player should get some of the things from the city as well. Invaders currently get yields and commerces from capturing enemy cities, but if the city surrenders, they get none of that plunder. I was thinking though that maybe yields and commerces should go to the defender's civ to represent evacuating as much supplies as possible before abandoning the city.

It gives a nice risk-reward balance in my mind too:

Pros

• Take the city without risk to your units.
• Army continues moving to the next target.
• City doesn't go through occupation phase, so you get the full healing benefits and basic cultural borders immediately (which could be useful in there's a valuable resource in its radius.
• City spawns basic defensive units or inherits them from the previous civ allowing you leave fewer units behind to defend what you've taken.

Cons

• You get no plunder.
• Enemy consolidates their remaining forces that are evacuated.
• Enemy possibly gets yields/commerces from surrendering city.
• If your units' victories are assured, you get no additional XP from killing the remaining units.